The present practice for cooking on a kitchen stove or on a portable heating appliance is to simply deposit the cooking vessel either directly on the electric heating element or on a support extending over the fuel burning heating element at the top surface of the heating appliance. Considerable heat is lost around the cooking vessel, because air heated by the heating element can escape freely around the vessel from underneath the top wall of the applicance, especially when the diameter of the cooking vessel is smaller than the diameter of the heating element. Also, it is easy to accidentally spill the contents of the cooking vessel, and this results in burning accidents. Spilling accidents frequently occur in chemical laboratories when stirring dangerous substances in a container, in the kitchen or dining room of a ship where the support surface of a food container might tilt.